Janee Pennington

Janee Pennington

Welcome to the online press kit for Janee Pennington

Inspiring Readers

Entrepreneur and "thriver" Janee Pennington wrote her first novel, Meeting Eve, based on 20 years of adventures in the hospitality industry

Sometime during her 20-year career in meeting and event planning for Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood studios and other high-powered groups, Janee Pennington realized she had a book inside her. Or two. Or even three.

“I’d have these wild adventures and would discuss them at dinner parties," she recalls. "Guests would comment that my life was stranger than fiction and I should really consider writing a book.”

Her new book Meeting Eve has been described as funny, fast-paced, absorbing and a “charming debut novel that will have you enraptured from its first pages.” It’s about Evelyn Walker, a single, confident 30-something running her own international meeting and event planning company, and her globetrotting journey of self-discovery.

Eve has been described as a woman who meets challenges with grace, persistence and confidence. Sort of like Janee, who wrote her first novel over seven years that included battling two bouts of cancer and losing her mother. Through these trials, she has stayed upbeat, joyous, warm and playful, ever determined to help and inspire others.

“My mother was getting older and she was saying, ‘You know Janee, you should really write a book. Listen to the people who tell you that all the time. Just write a book,’” Janee says. “I started writing the book before I was diagnosed with my first bout of breast cancer and that put me back a bit. But I kept on thinking as I was going through the cancer journey that it was probably a blessing in disguise. That if my story could make someone laugh and cry, someone going through a crisis or a tough time; then I wanted to keep writing. And so I did.”

Janee committed herself fully, working with friends and editors to hone the characters and story. As the years went by she dreamed of sharing her brainchild with her mom, an avid lifelong reader and book lover. But then she had to fight a second bout of breast cancer, and lost her mom shortly before Meeting Eve was published. She was able to read a few pages of the manuscript to her mom before she passed away. These setbacks only made her more determined to complete the book.

“Once I went through my second bout of breast cancer and I wasn’t sure I was going to live, I said, ‘Why not? I’m going to put it all out there,’” she says. “That’s how the book came to be.”

Somehow in the midst of all this, Janee found time to be executive director of two films, including a documentary now in preproduction about the first woman to sail solo round the world. Janee and her husband of almost 15 years live in Seattle where they enjoy cycling, traveling, riding ATVs and, in her passion for health, juicing. She's now at work on a second novel on further adventures of the intrepid Eve.

Like Eve, Janee loves connecting with people and will move mountains to make them happy. In Meeting Eve, she has created a character and story that will inspire readers to pursue their dreams and live and love passionately.

“Getting out there, going to a national park, spending time on the white sands of the beach or in the water – those experiences and the relationships that we have with other people are the best things we have here on this Earth,” she says.